There is a lot to celebrate as we close 2015 and move into 2016. It’s been five years since we released “The Invisible Red Thread”. The two main characters in the film, Vivian and Shuming, have grown so much. Vivian, then a grade 10 high school student making her first trip back to China, is now a hardworking university student with big dreams for the future. Shuming, then a painfully shy elementary school student, is now top of her class and soon to graduate high school. She is on track to be the first in her family to go to university.

Dr. Changfu Chang, our unit director in China, has released his own successful feature documentary Ricki’s Promise. And in October, China abolished its One Child Policy, first introduced in 1978, now allowing all families to have two children. That policy was the impetus for the social dynamic that caused Shuming and Vivian’s, like hundreds of thousands of other girls, to be given away by their parents two decades earlier.

And so with all of those good things in mind, we wish you a very happy holidays and a wonderful New Year!

The Invisible Red Thread is made possible with 100% funding from the OMNI Television Independent Producers Initiative. The $32.5 million fund is a seven-year commitment created and made available for the independent production of third-language ethnocultural programming. The fund is not only dedicated to helping Canadian independent producers tell their stories in their language of comfort, but also to make sure that these stories are accessible to other ethnocultural communities through re-versioning in different languages. This is the industry’s first, and only, major source of funding for the independent production of non-official language programming. More details on the fund are at OMNI Television’s website www.omnitv.ca